Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians

de Martin, Maurice (Pierre)

de Martin, Maurice (Pierre), drummer, composer, educator; b. Bad Aibling, Germany, 1 October 1969. Maurice de Martin comes from a family of musicians. His father (Bruno de Martin) was a bass player in some German beat-bands of the 60s, his mother (Anni de Martin) was one of the first non-classical lady-drummers in Germany.

Maurice received his first musical education at the age of seven. He graduated from the "Musisches Pestalozzi Gymnasium "(High School), Munich, where he received classical piano lessons and music theory until the age of 19.

After he started studying composition under the instruction of the Georgian composer, Giya Kancheli, as well as under Barbara Monk-Feldmann and Professor Dinu Ghezzo, who heads the composition department at New York University.

In addition de Martin studied jazz at the "Hochschule der Kunste [Academy of the Arts] in Berlin, Germany, under David Friedman, Jerry Granelli and Denney Goodhew. Further, he was educated in the Folklore of Eastern Europe at the music academy "G. Dima", in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, as a scholar in the DAAD [German Academic Exchange Service] artists exchange program.

From 1990 to 1995 de Martin lived in New York City, where he was engaged in the above mentioned compositional studies and drum lessons with Gene Jackson, Joey Baron, Joe Morello, Sam Ulano and Michael Carvin, during which period he was an active performer in the "downtown avant-garde scene" around the Knitting Factory, where he had the opportunity to collaborate with artists such as Bern Nix, Melvin Gibbs, Kermit Driscoll and Nana Simopoulos.

As of 1995 de Martin has been living in Berlin, Germany, where he currently works as a freelance composer and musician. In the stream of continuously developing international projects he has been performing his original music at many of the most renowned festivals in Europe. Aside from having been a participant in the "DAAD program, de Martin has been a "GVL" and "Romanian Ministry of Cultural Affairs"-scholar and was awarded the Studio Award '00 on behalf of the Berlin Senate.

From 1997 to 1999 de Martin moved to Romania and Bulgaria to research Eastern European folk music, and there, he was able to collaborate with some of the most original ensembles of traditional music indigenous of the Balkan region. (s.a. the famous Gipsy wedding band "Taraf de la Marsa" and the Bulgarian clarinet-virtuoso Ivo Papsov) His work with the culture of Eastern Europe was presented on the world exhibition EXPO 2000 Hannover within the program of the Romanian pavilion.

In his efforts with his own group, Interzone, de Martin connects some of the most remarkable musicians from the Balkan region with their Western European contemporaries, and because of that fact, he has been earning special attention from the public and the media for the last five years.

For quite some time now de Martin has been involved with "across-the-border" projects in the area of Avantgarde-Jazz and European contemporary music. Thereby, he has been working with the multinational ensemble, Timescraper, the Romanian modern-classical music composer, Calin Iaochmescu, in addition to being the percussionist of the Ambient/Drum 'n' Bass band, Digivooco, which is led by the Polish saxophonist, Adam Pieronczyk, alongside Gary Thomas, the avante-garde guitarist, Gunnar Geisse, and the live-electronic specialist, Tadeusz Sudnik, of Warsaw, Poland.

Since 2001 de Martin is a firm member of the new project of the bassist and free jazz legend Sirone, moreover, with the support of the Germany Ministry of Cultural Affairs he is able to lead the "Berlin Composers Ensemble", an 11-piece ensemble with some of the finest improvisers and composers in Europe. He also leads his saxophone-trio with a young Jazzman from Washington D.C: Ben Abarbanel-Wolff (former student of Milford Graves). The debut - album of this group earned great attention from the German press and is counted "... among the most important young voices in European Jazz today." (Suddeutsche Zeitung)